I recommend several of the longer goodreads Carnacki reviews, which hit all the important points.

Odd to come at this after reading Lovecraft (or, for that matter, Ligotti). Unlike Lovecraft's heroes, Carnacki seems to have no special affinity for the otherworldly. He's a scientist, not a man of culture, and doesn't feel himself to be an outsider. There's nothing gothic or romantic about him, nor about the Hodgson's prose, which tends towards the slangy ("funk" for fear, most notably), as if he's, well, an Edwardian bro. He and his fellows seem to eat a lot of sandwiches, sometimes for breakfast, and their drink of choice is whiskey (try to imagine any of Lovecraft's characters having whiskey and sandwiches!). The prose gets weird only when Carnacki tries to describe the ab-human or ab-normal. Strangely enough, the usual breeziness works. We might characterize the difference from Lovecraft this way: in the Carnacki stories, being normal is no protection from the otherworldly. Even dull people might get it. The weirdness might be anywhere.

Except....the Carnacki stories suffer from the usual humanism of ghost stories. Here's where Lovecraft's totally inhuman monsters are an enormous improvement. If every ghost is the ghost of--or directed at--a human, moreover, if every ghost lurks in some fancy house or with some fancy family, then the stories' weirdness just doesn't go far enough. We're in a world in which certain deaths matter and most don't: not the deaths of nonhumans, and not even most human deaths. There's nothing here to shake humans out of their complacency, as they're reminded with every ghost that the same species and class divisions of their Edwardian world also order the otherworld. I'm reminded of a friend who believes she has a ghost in her apartment, and I wanted to know if it could be, say, a chicken ghost, or a trilobite: why should we, who are, I hope, not humanists, always require the ghost to be human?

Some favorite bits below, some admirable, some just...silly.

"Another hour passed, after this, in an absolute quietness. I had a sense of awful strain and oppression, as though I were a little spirit in the company of some invisible, brooding monster of the unseen world, who, as yet, was scarcely conscious of us."

"As the door flew open, the sound beat out at us, with an effect impossible to explain to one who has not heard it--with a certain, horrible personal note in it; as if in there in the darkness you could picture the room rocking and creaking in a mad, vile glee to its own filthy piping and whistling and hooning."

"In addition to wearing the necklet, I had plugged my ears loosely with garlic."

"There came a sense as of dust falling continually and monotonously, and I knew that my life hung uncertain and suspended for a flash, in a brief reeling vertigo of unseeable things."

"it was a true instance of Saitii manifestation, which I can best explain by likening it to a living spiritual fungus."

"And, indeed, as you are all aware, I am as big a skeptic concerning the truth of ghost tales as any man you are likely to meet; only I am what I might term an unprejudiced skeptic. I am not given to either believing or disbelieving things 'on principle', as I have found many idiots prone to be, and what is more, some of them not ashamed to boast of the insane fact."

"I buckled on the plate armor and found it extraordinarily uncomfortable, and over all I drew on the chain mail. I know nothing about armor [Note: You don't say?], but from what I have learned since, I must have put on parts of two suits. Anyway, I felt beastly, clamped and clumsy and unable to move my arms and legs naturally."

"By ten o'clock, I had everything arranged, with the two pitchforks and the two police lanterns; also some whisky and sandwiches. Underneath the table I had several buckets of disinfectant." ( )

I'm giving the book a four-star rating overall, but two of the stories, "The Gateway of the Monster" and "The Whistling Room," deserve five stars, and a few I'd give only three. In Carnacki's investigations he comes across fakes, fakes combined with the ghosts, and Very Dangerous Supernatural Menaces that should make today's ghost hunters flee for their lives. (Of course, they couldn't flee for their lives in the story that takes place on an old ship, but they could choose whether to let whatever is there kill them or to jump overboard and drown. ) One story has no supernatural elements whatsoever, but it is a nice piece of detection. "The Hog" puzzled me because I couldn't figure out why hogs were supposed to be so horrifying. Now that I've read the author's earlier work, THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND, with its humanoid swine monsters; Mr. Hodgson's choice of supernatural hogs is scarier. Given when this book was written, it's nice that in the one story in which Carnacki's mother appears she's not shivering in a corner and wringing her hands while her son investigates. I love the thought of little Mrs. Carnacki with her fireplace poker in one hand and candle in the other, providing a rearguard to her son. I'm glad there are plenty of reprint copies around now. It's certainly worth reading even though the stories are uneven in quality. I really, really wanted the book after reading the two best stories in anthologies and this was one of two editions I knew existed back in those pre-world wide web days. The only reason I was able to afford the copy I found was that it had some water damage and was on sale for a third off. If you like stories about hauntings and don't mind slightly old-fashioned language, this is a book you'll want in your collection.

By the way, if you read Bluetyson's review, he is using "fag" as slang for "cigarette," not as an insulting term for a homosexual man, so please don't complain. That review is written in British English, not American English. ( )

Carnacki is not just a ghost hunter he is a consultant for people with weird happenings. He is called in to help those with cursed objects, strange dreams, and unexplainable nightly occurrences. He relates his adventures to his friends in his parlor after dinner, then answers questions and ushers his friends out into the cold night.

Hodgson creates high tension when his Carnacki character first encounters the phenomenon. This is the best part of the short stories. Carnacki's investigations unveil either a real psychic threat or a hoax and he then acts accordingly. When it is real, the phenomenon goes beyond the normal ghost haunting and into the weird. His explanations at the end of the stories are sometimes a disappointment. At the end of the tale "The Hog", one of the tensest and strangest stories, he goes into a verbose explanation of the psychic world that should have caused his friends to either yawn and squirm or leave his home in utter bewilderment. I had to scan through those paragraphs which lasted about five kindle pages. ( )

This is one of the scarier anthologies I own - the irony being at least half the time the scares are fake!

Carnacki is probably the first ghost investigator - fictional or otherwise. The stories basically involve him going to a haunted place, camping out, and figuring out whether it's real or not.

The scares come, not just from Hodgson's solid prose, but because of the randomness of the hauntings. Without having to bend his ghosts to a greater narrative arc or metaphor, Hodgson make for some terrifically macabre scenes. The randomness and inexplicability of the ghosts - plus the fact you never know if they are "real" or not - adds to the suspense in a really effective way.

Carnacki himself is a fine enough character - albeit not a particularly intriguing one, but really he's just a canvas for Hodgson's fevered imagination.

This is a great anthology and arguably stronger than any of Hodgson's novels, with their more lovecraftian, inter-dimensional bent. ( )

Carnacki had just returned to Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. (The Thing Invisible)

In response to Carnacki's usual card of invitation to have dinner and listen to a story, I arrived promptly at Cheyne Walk, to find the three others who were always invited to these happy little times there before me. (The Gateway of the Monster)

This is a curious yarn that I am going to tell you, said Carnacki, as after a quiet little dinner we made ourselves comfortable in his cozy dining room. (The House Among the Laurels)

Carnacki shook a friendly fist at me as I entered, late. (The Whistling Room)

It was still evening, as I remember, and the four of us, Jessop, Arkright, Taylor and I looked disappointedly at Carnacki where he sat silent in his great chair. (The Searcher of the End House)

I had that afternoon received an invitation from Carnacki. (The Horse of the Invisible)

Seen anything of Carnacki lately? I asked Arkright when we met in the City. (The Haunted Jarvee)

In response to Carnacki's usual card of invitation to dinner I arrived in good time at Cheyne Walk, to find Arkright, Taylor and Jessop already there, and a few minutes later we were seated around the dining table. (The Find)

I saw something rising up through the middle of the defense. (first sentence of the quotation at the beginning of The Hog)

Quotations

Last words

If she had, eh? If she had? That is what I kept thinking. (The Whistling Room -- I am not going to bother to add the last words of the other eight stories because they all end with Carnacki's friends going to their various homes. The embankement is often mentioned. Sometimes good nights are. Carnacki's usual formula for telling his friends that it's time for them to leave is, Out you go, but it's said in a genial/friendly way.)

Long before the supernatural detectives at the center of television shows such as Medium and The ghost whisperer hit the airwaves, there was "detective of the occult" Thomas Carnacki, the fictional detective created by William Hope Hodgson, author of the novel The house on the Borderland. The Carnacki tales center around the eponymous detective's uncanny ability to get to the bottom of hauntings and other mysterious paranormal disturbances.… (more)